Desiderium Cogito
by Sarah LoTuS
Summary: COGITO to turn over in the mind , to think, reflect DESIDERIUM desire or longing , grief for the absence or loss of a person or thing.


Title: Desiderium Cogito   
Author: Sarah LoTuS   
Written: 21-22/10/2000   
Disclaimer: You know who they belong to. Not me. Lyrics belong to Song Zu and Pearl Jam.   
Summary:   
COGITO - to turn over in the mind , to think, reflect   
DESIDERIUM - desire or longing , grief for the absence or loss of a person or thing.

Tissue alert!

Dedication: to Jaye, for being the sounding board, Jules for her excellent help with finishing my assignment early so I could write the darned thing, Sonni for her encouragement and assistance with said assignment, and the push to write the fic! And, to Erin, for reminding me that today is the one year anniversary of my first ratfic.

Author's Note: Well, this is just a little ficlet to celebrate two anniversaries; my first ratfic, and that other one (grr!). I had my own ideas what to do with it when I started, but it sort of turned into a stream of consciousness fic, and Jack took over from there! Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated, even though I have been too busy to send any for absolutely forever!! lotus@primus.com.au

~~ *** ~~

Desiderium Cogito

~* Sometimes life's a contradiction   
Partly truth and partly fiction   
Some wounds not even time can heal *~

Disbelief and shock only lasted for so long. With the evidence before me, how could I believe anything else? She was dead.

Even as I watched them lowering that coffin into the ground, I knew it wasn't her, couldn't be her. She'd tricked me somehow, made me think she was dead while she was really off somewhere, happy as a lark.

It was my anger that sustained me for that first week. Anger, directed at anyone and everyone. Mick, who wasn't there, Ax for leading us on that goddamned wild goose chase in the first place. Even Rachel, for not   
holding on just two minutes more.

And Charlie Driscoll, the evil one. Only, she wasn't evil, was she? I realised that, in that cold dark place, when she begged me not to kill her. There was no absolute evil, as there was no absolute good. And my anger dissipated.

Leaving nothingness.

Not a blessed nothingness, as in an absence of feeling or pain, but a vacuum, drawing in every unpleasant thought around it and not letting go. A void. A sucking chest wound, with nothing left to fill it but guilt.

~* But tonight I'm in some kind of trance and it won't let go *~

That scene plays itself over and over in my mind, as if some action of mine could change the outcome.

But of course, the ending is always the same. I suffer it a thousand times, watching her, feeling the tears dripping down my face and onto hers as the light slowly fades from her eyes.

Is there no relief?

~* I don't wanna want you even though I want to   
I don't wanna want you, tonight   
I don't wanna stay here, spend another day here,   
I don't wanna want you, tonight *~

I miss her so much that it aches. I know that's a cliché, but it's the only way to describe it. I feel like I've gained no ground at all; even a year later.

When her father gave me her diary, it was like I had her back, just for a little while. I put off actually reading it for so long, as if I could keep her with me by waiting. It seems silly now, but while there was that small part of her that I hadn't seen yet it was as if she was still with me.

Once the anger was gone, though, I needed to fill the void with something other than the horrors that my psyche continued to conjure.

I opened the book, feeling as though I was killing her all over again. Once I read it, I would have to accept that she was truly gone forever.

Her spirit drifted further from me with every word, but strangely, her words seemed to draw me closer to her than I had ever been before. These were her most intimate thoughts, thoughts she only entrusted to a small black book, which, no doubt, she had kept well hidden.

It was cathartic, reading those words, but how could anything even come close to healing the gash in my soul?

It didn't of course, but it gave me the strength to continue, for another week, another month. Another year.

I don't know if it's the anniversary, or whether I've just run out of steam, but I feel it now as if it was yesterday. Maybe it's the sympathetic looks I've been getting at work, especially from Mick and Jeff. Helen, too, but somehow her looks don't bother me as much, because I know she is feeling as lost as I am.

Helen and Felix got together to arrange a memorial service next Thursday. I don't know if I'll go. It'll probably help, to talk about her, even cry about her. It has seemed, this past year, that her name has been taboo. Not to be spoken on pain of death. Or perhaps on pain of pain; the unresolved grief that threatens to overwhelm us all.

Strangely enough, I don't want to resolve my grief. It would feel like a betrayal. My grief is all that I have left of her, and though it's an emptiness that is constantly there, I don't want it filled.

I'm not ready to let her go just yet.

~* Now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything   
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything.   
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all that I will be *~

finis   



End file.
